I don't think you can use arbritrary (made up) information in describing the historical state of an event or situation. It's there in the books; either it happened or it did not. And my point is that both in the past and present, the upper levels of air travel as a whole have never declined to a point commensurate with the highest level of comfort and service achieved by lower class levels in the past forty years, which is my personal experience of flying. On a LCC or a short-hop/shuttle codeshare airline maybe there is little difference in classes, but in the legacy carriers even though the standards have adjusted downwards as society has changed it norms along with demand for said standards, there is a clear distinction between flying coach, business and first, from check-in to on-boarding, in the air and deplaning, the overall experience, across the industry, is different and it is still designed that way right from inception. And maybe that's one of the reasons that they've failed to make any real progress aside from surviving, since deregulation.

As a somewhat tall person, I feel your pain.